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Picture it, the year is currently 2018; we are now living in the 21st century.

For people in the U.S, myself included, we at times take for granted the basic freedoms that we have, like being able to speak freely and openly about the President of the United States without being punished for our perceptions of him.

Now imagine this: we are all aware of America’s ugly antiquity with slavery, but the question we find ourselves having to ask is, did slavery ever truly end?

If you asked me, I would say no.

When people think of slavery, they want to believe that it was a thing of the past, a distant memory that holds no resonance. I believe this notion is wrong. When you think in terms of how things were back in early America, it is a completely different world compared to now. For instance, most people would think that slavery ended openly.

What I would say really happened is it just evolved.

Do you really think that people would be so ready and willing to give up a system that made them so vastly wealthy, even though this “said” system was cruel and inhumane?

While we are free in many ways, we are still slaves to the mind as well as the system.

For thousands of people around the world, foreign places especially, the slave trade is something that has been “normalized” so much so that they literally have slave auctions out in public, which is not unheard of in various regions of Libya. Majority of the people who are auctioned off as slaves are sold for as little as $400, and most of them are migrants looking to make it into Europe.

There have been a few situations where people were able to be liberated, due to IOM (International Organization of Migration). From reading the articles which held actual accounts from people who endured the cruel form of human trafficking in Libya, but who were able to escape, it was said that slavery of migrants was happening mostly in private prisons. These people would be held at ransom, and unless their families could come up with the money that would grant them their freedom, they would be killed.

As crazy as this sounds, for most people in the world, this has been the first time that human trafficking in Libya has been broadcast for the rest of the world to see. But, it seems now that anything about what is going on in Libya has been almost silenced since. Rarely is anything heard on news about it, if at all.

Why is that?

Are we as a society so heartless and apathetic that we would turn a blind eye to people in need?

At times, it seems like people care more about the superficial issues in the world rather than the deeper ones that will make all the difference in someone else’s life.

We live in a world where technology is literally at our fingertips. Why not use that platform to find a solution to issues such as the ones like what is happening in Libya? Just like Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”